Inkjet technology has expanded its application to high-speed, commercial and industrial printing, in addition to home and office usage. In this printing method, print media play a key role in the overall image quality and permanence of the printed images. Thus, it has often created challenges to find media that can be effectively used with such printing techniques. Coated recording materials (or media) are available for inkjet technology to produce high image quality comparable to that of offset printing. It is desirable to make these recording material low cost to enable inkjet printing to be cost-efficient and to compete with traditional analog printing or other digital printing technologies, like laser printing or liquid electrophotography technologies.
In view of obtaining a superior image quality, coated recording materials have been developed for inkjet technology process, especially, for high-speed printers. Such materials have single or multiple image-receiving layers that are disposed onto a media substrate, i.e. layer onto which ink droplets are deposited.
The image-receiving layer is often made of a coating composition that includes inorganic or organic pigments as the filler and polymeric materials as the binder, along with other optional functional materials. The image-receiving layer often promotes performance of the ink receiving properties of the media such as image quality and durability. It also improves the sheet quality of the printing media. For example, coated media show superior physical properties over uncoated media in terms of paper physical appearance such as gloss and surface smoothness.
Though the above list of characteristics provides a worthy goal to achieve, there are difficulties associated with satisfying all of the above characteristics. Accordingly, investigations continue into developing coating formulations that provides high quality recording materials.